I have not, but it is on my list. I spend most of my time at Detroit Golf Club, but try to get out and see some of the public courses in the area when I can.
Highly recommend Blackheath in Rochester, like I said in the above post, if you haven’t tried it out though. Really fun track.
Yeah I would love to see Detroit Golf Club everything I have heard is amazing. I have played it a couple times I used to live out that way. I really really like it. A couple holes feel like you have to watch your back so you don’t get a tee shot in the head but other that that it is one of my favorite public courses around.
DGC is a fantastic place, especially with the recent tree removal projects they have been undertaking (needs to be muchhhh more aggressive in my mind).
Definitely agree about Blackheath, you can get smoked on a couple holes haha. But if you are paying attention you should be fine. It’s a great example for other courses to follow, good greens and open fairways. If they cut down the heather a tad on some holes it would be really special.
Yeah I would love to see it all the pictures I have seen look spectacular. How do you feel about the PGA making a stop there this year? Are they just going to grow up the rough a ton? Because it is not the longest of courses right?
Very excited about the tournament. It plays around 7100 right now, they are adding about 3-400 yards to the course, and with how little roll you get in the fairways it will play longer. If the greens are firm it’ll play relatively tough for them.
The South Course is the real gem though. Its a par 68 that plays around 6000 yards on a flat piece of land. Still plays tough and is just a joy to play. Gives you two very distinct and different courses to play.
I bet. I was going to get to play it last year but got rained out. I am really excited to see how it plays at the tournament and will probably be there a couple days in person to walk the grounds.
South is so much more enjoyable than the North at DGC… would play 8 rounds on South to 2 on North out of 10. Compared to some other privates in the area it seems like DGCs tree management program is rather stagnant. Red Run and Birmingham look awesome after Bruce Hepners consulting there. DGC North has so many dumb trees
i heard the plan to use a couple of the holes on the South for the PGA event was axed and they will just play the North straight up… quite disappointing as the holes i played at DGC in the HAIG event that was sent to the tour was an awesome 18 holes.
Agreed. You can tell that course was amazing until they had to reroute the front 9 to build 696. I’d love to see Rackham restored but it seems pretty hopeless. I love a lot of the Fried Egg stuff with Andy Staples on community golf but it’s really hard to convince a city to dump money into a course for the good of it’s residents when it’s 20 minutes outside the city.
In an ideal world they would just sell it to Huntington Woods to operate and maintain but I think Detroit is holding out hope they will be able to sell the course to a developer someday.
South is definitely my favorite of the two, but the North is still a great track. Could be really special with a renovation (the pictures of what it used to be are INSANE). The members LOVE their trees so its tough to get a lot of them cut down and the use of trees for “safety” is wayyyy overdone.
The South course had pretty significant tree removal during its recent quasi renovation (also done by Hepner). I haven’t seen Birmingham’s redesign, but am really not a fan of that course. Red Run looks MUCH better.
They are only going to use the first hole of the South course, and that mostly because the new tee for 2 North hits over 1 North. I agree the HAIG routing was a ton of fun and really challenging, but the logistics of it just wouldn’t work for a tour event.
I used to have a picture of the original routing, can’t find it for some reason now though. From that image, it didn’t really seem like the highway encroached on that many holes. Moreso, they added length to number 1 to make it a par 5, which then messed up the routing. Plus the tree planting has just been atrocious.
I just don’t think Huntington Woods has the capital to do that, and its basically an impossible sell to get the city to dump money into a golf course with all of the problems Detroit has (public schools, roads, etc.). Our best bet would to follow the Cobbs Creek model, but even that is an extreme long shot.
Found the original routing picture, tough to tell how much the highway really changed it though.
its just so shocking to look at that pic and wonder what Jerry Matthews was thinking when he dog-legged the south west corner of the course to death.
2-6 could all be back to that look and the holes would just be a bit shorter, and prob 10x more fun. for how short the course is on the card that back 9 never feels short. there are some stout holes
Everyone always tells me its the highways fault… its really just Jerry Matthews haha. If you have played his other courses you will see a similar trend. 2-6 is terrible (5 is a pretty good hole at least), and also probably is the easiest stretch on the course. Really disturbs me that anyone would think what he did was a “good idea”.
The back certainly doesn’t feel short, and even when you have a wedge in your hand its not an easy wedge. The two par 3s are monsters, and the short 4s are all great. 12 might be too good.
I pray at some point we will see a restoration, but until someone takes it off the cities hands I highly doubt it will happen.
Awhile back I photoshopped that photo over the google maps. It’s not perfect but you can definitely see how 696 forced an overhaul of the first few holes.
How did you make sure the scale was right? Really interesting, because I have always wondered what people meant by the highway forcing the renovation.
Still hard to defend what Matthews did to the first couple holes. Could have just moved the green to roughly where it is now on 2, and kept the rest of the course the same. I always thought the green on 3 was the green on the original 2nd hole.
Ha, you know what’s amazing? I locked the proportions of it so it wouldn’t stretch too far one way or another and it fit almost perfectly over the map. The only change I had to make was rotating it a little to line it up with the roads. Here’s the original from the Tufts Archives:
That’s really cool, awesome to see they even had a practice range. Really wish they could find something to do with those first couple holes. Like we have all said, could be such a special place. Really wish we could find some pictures of the original first few holes.
Michigan NLU Fans - we’ve got a pretty cool event that we are hosting at TopGolf Auburn Hills on Sunday, March 3rd if you’re interested in playing some winter “golf”.
We’re hosting a 3-on-3, March Madness-style tournament at TopGolf Auburn Hills and would love to see some fellow NLU fans out there. We just opened up the registration today (12/18) and space is limited to the 1st 16 teams to sign up.
I was happy to see a few players at our year-end event at Shepherd’s Hollow wearing some NLU gear! Anyways, feel free to check out mittengolftour.com/schedule if you are interested in the March “Mitten Madness” event.
I’m in Ypsilanti used to live in Ferndale and will second the Rackham love. Front nine redesign sucks but back side is pure. Another good public track to throw out there is Coyote Preserve in Fenton. Arnold Palmer design and has some dramatic elevation changes. Worth checking out.
Curious to know your handicap. I’m going to guess you’re a low single digit. I mostly like Coyote Preserve as well, but I don’t think it’s a great golf course for most people. My buddies HATE this course. And, I think there are several legit reasons:
With that said, I like the golf course overall. It’s a very challenging test of ones game, particularly off the tee. Cool elevation changes, interesting green complexes. If you’re willing to take that on, it’s a fun course.
